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William Wordsworth Quotes
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William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads .

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's poet laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850. Wikipedia  

✵ 7. April 1770 – 23. April 1850   •   Other names Уильям Вордсворт, ویلیام وردزورث
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William Wordsworth: 306   quotes 36   likes

William Wordsworth Quotes

“Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The Ploughboy is whooping—anon—anon!
There's joy in the mountains:
There's life in the fountains;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone.”

William Wordsworth

Written in March, st. 2 (1801).

Life , Mountain , Joy

“A multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Time

“T is hers to pluck the amaranthine flower
Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower,
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind.”

William Wordsworth

Weak is the Will of Man.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Faith , Flowers , Affliction , Suffering

“But an old age serene and bright,
And lovely as a Lapland night,
Shall lead thee to thy grave.”

William Wordsworth

To a Young Lady, st. 3 (1805).

Love , Age , Night

“What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known, st. 7 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Lovers , Dead

“Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you 'll grow double!
Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks!
Why all this toil and trouble?”

William Wordsworth The Tables Turned

The Tables Turned.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Books

“Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness.”

William Wordsworth

Ode to Lycoris.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Sadness , Happiness

“These feeble and fastidious times.”

William Wordsworth

Letter to Alexander Dyce (April 19, 1830).

Time

“Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice.”

William Wordsworth

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland, l. 1 (1807).

Mountain , Sea

“Hail to thee, far above the rest
In joy of voice and pinion!
Thou, linnet! in thy green array,
Presiding spirit here to-day,
Dost lead the revels of the May;
And this is thy dominion.”

William Wordsworth

The Green Linnet, st. 2 (1803).

Joy

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, st. 1 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Love , Way , Spring

“And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 11.
A Poet's Epitaph (1799)

Love

“And often, glad no more,
We wear a face of joy because
We have been glad of yore.”

William Wordsworth

The Fountain, st. ?? (1799).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Joy

“She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways, st. 3 (1799).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams - can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man.”

William Wordsworth The Recluse

The Recluse, l. 788 (1805).

Fear , Dreams , Help

“Alas! how little can a moment show
Of an eye where feeling plays
In ten thousand dewy rays:
A face o'er which a thousand shadows go!”

William Wordsworth

The Triad.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Feeling

“Dear Child of Nature, let them rail!”

William Wordsworth

To a Young Lady, st. 1 (1805).

Nature

“A soul so pitiably forlorn,
If such do on this earth abide,
May season apathy with scorn,
May turn indifference to pride;
And still be not unblest—compared
With him who grovels, self-debarred
From all that lies within the scope
Of holy faith and christian hope;
Or, shipwrecked, kindles on the coast
False fires, that others may be lost.”

William Wordsworth

To the Lady Fleming, st. 7 (1823).

Faith , Hope , Soul , Falseness

“The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream.”

William Wordsworth

Elegiac Stanzas. Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, st. 4 (1805).

Dreams , Light , Sea

“As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die!”

William Wordsworth

The Old Cumberland Beggar.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nature

“One solace yet remains for us who came
Into this world in days when story lacked
Severe research, that in our hearts we know
How, for exciting youth's heroic flame,
Assent is power, belief the soul of fact.”

William Wordsworth

Memorials of a Tour in Italy (1837), IV ("story" refers to History).

Youth , World , Soul , Heart

“Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!—
The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.”

William Wordsworth

Personal Talk, Stanza 4.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Truth

“When his veering gait
And every motion of his starry train
Seem governed by a strain
Of music, audible to him alone.”

William Wordsworth

The Triad.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Music , Training

“But, whenever a portion of this facility we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it will suggest of him, must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that with is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of these passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus produced, or feels to be produced, in himself. However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a Poet, it is obvious, that, while he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Life , Men , Truth , Feeling

“Minds that have nothing to confer
Find little to perceive.”

William Wordsworth

Yes, Thou art Fair, Yet Be Not Moved, st. 2 (1845).

“Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.”

William Wordsworth

To a Butterfly (I've Watched You Now a Full Half-Hour), st. 2 (1801).

“And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.”

William Wordsworth

Source: Character of the Happy Warrior http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww302.html (1806), Line 53.

Law

“What is pride? A whizzing rocket
That would emulate a star.”

William Wordsworth

Inscriptions Supposed to be Found in and near a Hermit's Cell, l. 11 (1818).

Star

“Nor less I deem that there are Powers
Which of themselves our minds impress;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Expostulation and Reply, st. 6 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

“A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”

William Wordsworth Peter Bell

Part I, stanza 12.
Peter Bell (1798)

“Meek Nature's evening comment on the shows
That for oblivion take their daily birth
From all the fuming vanities of earth.”

William Wordsworth

Sky-Prospect from the Plain of France.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Birth , Nature

“We bow our heads before Thee, and we laud
And magnify thy name Almighty God!
But man is thy most awful instrument
In working out a pure intent.”

William Wordsworth

Ode. Imagination before Content.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

God

“Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.”

William Wordsworth book Poems, in Two Volumes

Stanza 7. http://books.google.com/books?id=pzgJAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Thou+dost+preserve+the+stars+from+wrong+And+the+most+ancient+heavens+through+Thee+are+fresh+and+strong%22&pg=PA73#v=onepage
Ode to Duty http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww271.html (1805)

Star , Strong

“Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 1.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Mountain , Spring , Water , Winter

“The good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take, who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”

William Wordsworth

Rob Roy's Grave, st. 9.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

“Lady of the Mere,
Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.”

William Wordsworth

A Narrow Girdle of Rough Stones and Crags, l. 37 (1803).

“Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer.”

William Wordsworth

Actually Night I, line 390 of Edward Young's Night Thoughts.
Misattributed

Madness

“Burn all the statutes and their shelves:
They stir us up against our kind;
And worse, against ourselves.”

William Wordsworth

Rob Roy's Grave, st. 5.
Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803)

“The grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Bk. I, l. 381.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Star

“But thou that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation.”

William Wordsworth

Yarrow Visited.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Imagination , Light , Appearance

“To the solid ground
Of Nature trusts the mind that builds for aye.”

William Wordsworth

A Volant Tribe of Bards on Earth.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nature

“And when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains,—alas! too few.”

William Wordsworth

Scorn not the Sonnet.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Soul , Animals

“Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 2.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html (1804)

Dance

“All men feel something of an honorable bigotry for the objects which have long continued to please them.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Men , Feeling

“Thou, while thy babes around thee cling,
Shalt show us how divine a thing
A Woman may be made.”

William Wordsworth

To a Young Lady, st. 2 (1805).

“She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair,
Like twilights too her dusky hair,
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful dawn.”

William Wordsworth

Stanza 1.
She Was a Phantom of Delight http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww259.html (1804)

Love , Star , Time

“It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea.”

William Wordsworth

It Is a Beautious Evening, l. 1 (1807).

Time , Sun , Sea

“One of those heavenly days that cannot die.”

William Wordsworth

Nutting.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“How blessings brighten as they take their flight!”

William Wordsworth

Occasionally misattributed to Wordsworth, but in fact by Edward Young again. It is from his Night Thoughts, Night II, line 602.
Misattributed

“In years that bring the philosophic mind.”

William Wordsworth

Intimations of Immortality Stanza 10.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)